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Moai on Easter Island

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Northern Nicaragua, Part 3: Deep Sea Fishing and Kayaking

This is the final installment of my series on northern
Nicaragua.The trip was sponsored by Green Pathways and
MatadorU.

My final day along the Pacific coast of northern Nicaragua
was spent entirely on the water.A morning of fishing called for an early wake up to head out in a relatively small boat owned by a
local fisherman named Noel.His house
was on a concrete slab with the small dock as his front porch—all sheltered by
the mangrove forest that we would kayak through later in the afternoon.

Lunch!

It was a slow day in the water and the frigate birds were
catching more fish than us. The owner of
the boat said it is usually wasn’t that slow on the water since he catches
enough fish to support his family. Until
the last half and hour on the water the most action we saw were two sea turtles
mating on the surface of the water. Just
before heading back we hooked a mackerel and brought it back for lunch. Less than two hours later is was grilled and
sitting on my plate surrounded by rice, beans and fried plantains. Delicious!

Later in the afternoon, we headed back to Noel’s house and
hopped in a couple of kayaks to explore the mangrove forests.Many of the passages only open up in low tide
and reveal tunnels and hidden beaches behind the walls of mangrove trees.As a kid this would be the ultimate place to
have a tree fort within this secret mangrove kingdom.After learning a bit about mangrove ecology,
we raced back to the dock before the evening thunderstorms came in and
concluded my last day in Nicaragua.

Kayaking through tunnels in the mangrove forest.

Mangrove trees live in saltwater and sacrifice a few of their leaves (the yellow ones shown above)
to rid the whole tree of the extra salt.